Join Thomas Grave as he delves into the heart of sport with wit, wisdom, and a touch of mischief – where every game has a story to tell.
Arabella Fairflight knows darts. She has three children but she cannot know them better than she knows her triumvirate of fully fletched quarter ounce steel tips.
When she approaches the oche she does so with the ready conviction of the predestined.
She will win. She will win.
At the heaving Bull and Bush Hall, her younger, much hyped, opponent Tender Lessing was no lesser person. The destiny she endured was to encounter Fairflight not just at her best, but at any best.
People have said of the teenager that the expectations weigh her down, that the boisterous crowd ask of her too much of such a whey-faced school girl but these are trifles compared to the insatiable, inevitability of a Fairflight victory.
The 39-year-old sees things others do not see and what she saw on Sunday was Lessing cracking and Lessing losing.
The youngster will return to this hallowed hall again – but never so young.
Crossing the line into another world
There is but a line, perhaps six inches wide and white. It is not a hurdle, but an opportunity, not a barrier but a gateway. It is over this gaudy strip that Bartholomew Fitz-william took a step onto the field of play – and into history.
He said farewell to the plucky Frank Edmund. For Edmund is history now, a forgotten undone warrior substituted in the 87th minute in this pulsating football mach with the scoreboard demanding a last throw of the dice.
How can a person be measured in such fractions – in units of courage, in the feet and inches of distance run, in the uplift in spirit? Nevertheless, when Fitz-william strode upon the field of battle, eager, yes, daunted, yes, but with a capacity for greatness, the Lionhearts were 6-5 down.
When the whistle was blown and the score was 8-6. Yes, the Dandelion Academy still lost and were dumped out the Brightside Under-11s Trophy but what these lads had lost in gate receipts, they had gained in armour, fibre, muscle, heart and spirit. It will stand them in good stead.
We fight, we thaw, we let the matter rest
Last month’s column was tart. I concede a man was bruised by my words, as many are.
We stand, the two of us, as implacable foes, both immovable objects. I blink first.
I approach Bridgestock Second 11 hockey manager Archie Grind and attempt, with a loose forefinger, to mark out the terrain of common ground where we can parlay. I have offended him. I telegram him thus: “I regret your reaction but I stand by my remarks. The Second 11 defence leaked like a sieve conceding five goals before half-time.”
Manager Grind is a pragmatic man. He knows any victory in this war of words will be hollow for score lines and league tables do not lie.
Still, pride makes demands. We are but two gunslingers at high noon. Twitching. His turn to blink. He wants a retraction. I deny him. He wants a qualification. I thaw.
Like men, we talk and rail, wave our arms and wring our hands. We find compromise to wit: one statement in which I acknowledge sieves do not leak as a failure of function.
It is the job of sieves to leak as part of the act of separating the wanted from the unwanted, the hard stuff from the sloppy.
He is content. We holster our pistols. We shake hands. He sacks defensive coach Herb Longstaff. Herb stares daggers. Peace is restored.